On 5 October 2021 the UK’s Minister for Skills, Alex Burghart, announced that the UK Government will pass laws to ban essay mills.
Essay mills are completely unethical and profit by undermining the hard work most students do. We are taking steps to ban these cheating services.
Alex Burghart MP
The new laws are contained in the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, and will make it a criminal offence to provide, arrange or advertise these cheating services for financial gain to students taking a qualification at any institution in England providing post-16 education including universities. This approach is similar to that adopted by Australia, which passed laws to outlaw commercial or contract cheating services in August 2020.
Essay Mills – risks for international students
You could get kicked out…
Paying an essay mill or contract cheating company to do an assignment is cheating and will be a serious breach of the academic integrity policies at your educational institution. If you are found out you will likely face very serious consequences, and could be kicked out.
You could get blackmailed…
Once you use an essay mill or contract cheating service they have power over you. There are reports of students who used a contract cheating company being blackmailed by the company, who asks for more money and threatens to tell the student’s educational institution they hired the contract cheating company to do their assignments.
You could be committing a criminal offence…
The new UK laws will outlaw the advertising of contract cheating services. Often contract cheating companies will employ students to help promote their services on campus. Once the laws are passed, any student promoting the service of an essay mill or contract cheating company may be committing a criminal offence.
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Source: gov.uk